From weddings to whales plus a worldwide IT outage, after 20 years the job still delivers, says Holiday Village agent Andrea Smith
Be a homeworker, they said; be your own boss and build your career around your home life. While it’s not always been easy – and having no fixed salary can be scary until you grow your client base – the job has always delivered, and 20 years on I still love it.
They call us home-based business owners now, but regardless of title it’s all about flexibility, and it’s as important to me today as it was with young children. Now, with grandparenting added to farm duties, life is never dull, but recently the change of direction was so quick I was in danger of getting whiplash.
Change of tack
On one Wednesday morning I was wedding-dress shopping with my daughter, followed by sheep shearing in the afternoon. Thursday saw me on a day of Antarctic training, then Friday brought us the joy that was a worldwide IT outage, leaving my customers in airports across the country waiting on flights that might never happen.
The job has always delivered, and 20 years on I still love it
My sister was one of those customers, reminding me of the old travel agent adage to never book your family. Her boarding card was handwritten on a scrap of paper, but I was just grateful she had one. Sitting here in my home office under a barrage of texts from clients was stressful, but at least I could do it with a cup of tea and a huge bar of chocolate on my desk, far away from the frontline. I can only imagine how tough it was for airport staff, so to those of you at Manchester and Gatwick who got my clients in the air that Friday, you have my thanks.
Polar potential
The Antarctic training day was a more pleasant experience. It was arranged by the Expedition Cruise Network and hosted by Scenic and Emerald Cruises at their Manchester HQ. My client bank has some high-spend touring passengers, yet expedition cruising is a previously unexplored sector for me (pun intended).
As a wildlife buff, the destinations fascinate me, and who wouldn’t want to sell a product with an average £7k per person spend?
At the ECN event, Antarctica was described as “the last place on Earth where you can still feel like an explorer”. And with citizen science programmes, clients have the chance to help with research by monitoring wildlife and the environment. All of which creates a very engaging picture to paint for the right type of client.
While on board, passengers learn from the naturalists, geologists, photographers, ornithologists and historians who make up the expedition teams. Add to that the opportunity to kayak and dive in polar waters, see penguins, whales, seals or polar bears in the Arctic, or camp overnight on the ice shelf, and you have a pretty exciting product.
Andrew Tait of AE Expeditions described expedition cruising as a “safari on ice”, which I think is a great analogy to help identify potential passengers – but this kind of holiday isn’t for everyone. It’s billed as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, yet both Poseidon and AE tell me that their repeat client ratios are about 17% across all regions, so not just once-in-a-lifetime, after all.
With such high average spends, and the possibility of repeats, I’ll be watching out for clients who want to release their inner Shackleton.
Small ships make more landings
When travelling to polar regions, it’s a case of the smaller the better. From 2025, Norway is capping the size of ships visiting Svalbard national parks at 200 passengers, though ‘wild landings’ outside these areas are not so restricted. Antarctica already sets restrictions at 100 passengers ashore simultaneously.
The more passengers on a ship, the less time each passenger gets ashore. In Antarctica, Category 1 ships with 13-200 passengers can make the most landings, Category 2 ships with 201-500 passengers can make fewer landings and ships with 500‑plus passengers can make no landings at all. Worth knowing when you’re booking.